


Quinn of Athos

by anstaar



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Children, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstaar/pseuds/anstaar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Quinn saw a woman he was eleven years old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quinn of Athos

The first time Quinn saw a woman he was eleven years old. He was dawdling outside his fathers' study, reluctantly thinking about handing them the note his teacher had sent home and was considering how much trouble he would be facing if he just destroyed it and they found out about it later. He wasn't thinking about it, seriously, because Jani was a telltale of untold proportions and, anyway, dad could always tell when he was lying, but thinking about it was a fun delaying tactic. He didn't want to have to explain why he punched Simon. If he told the truth he would have to deal with their apologies. If he stayed quiet he would receive another lecture on the importance of controlling his temper and how he had to be an example for his brothers.  
  
Eventually, he slid the door open and slipped through. His parents didn't see him at first. Father was sitting in front of the consol, leaning back against dad, whose arm was wrapped loosely around his shoulders. It froze Quinn for a moment, watching that. He knew his parents loved each other (a disgusting amount in  _his_  opinion seeing as they had been together for thirteen years now and father  _still_  smiled sickeningly when dad got back from work) but this casual contract was still something new.   
  
Quinn could still remember back (long ago, way before Eli and Eric came home) when father would still stiffen slightly whenever he hugged him. Back then, father had actually looked older than he did now and he would be gone for long hours during the day. Quinn knew that this was because father was one of the rare off-worlders that had come to live on Athos (which was something even Jani didn't know because dad had told  _his_ , alone, when he had asked why father could be so different sometimes and Jani was still too young to ask) and he thought that off-world must be a hard place to make someone so sad. Then father had started to create art and he stayed home, except sometimes when he went to the hospital with dad, and had also started to sometimes hug Quinn first, without prompting, (and even now when he was really too old to be hugging his father all the time he didn't wriggle away when father held him in a tight embrace).  
  
Dad noticed him first, of course, and smiled. "Come look," he said and Quinn did, not even dragging his feet, eager to catch a look at the console. Getting in trouble was far more common than getting a good look at dad's work.   
  
"Your youngest brother," father said, with his rare smile. Dad wrapped an arm around Quinn shoulder and they stood there for a few minutes, linked together, watching the twisting gene map.   
  
"Is he going to have another E name?" Quinn asked cunningly (soppiness was always a good bet for avoiding getting into trouble) but dad only laughed and father shook his head.   
  
"No names until we bring him home, as you well know. Now, what's happened?" Father always knew when something had happened, he was even better than dad. There was even less of a point in lying to him.  
  
"I hit Simon," Quinn muttered and handed over the note. Father scanned it and dad sighed, taking his hand.  
  
"Another fight?" Quinn shifted because there wasn't anything he could say in answer to that tone and his dad's smile had faded into his disappointed look that there was no escaping. Surprisingly, he didn't ask what happened.  
  
"I think it's time we showed you something," he said. Quinn had no idea what he could want to show him but anything was better than trying to explain his actions to dad. Dad never understood why he fought. Sometimes, Quinn thought, father understood but it was always dad he had to explain himself to. Dad leaned over father's shoulder and clicked on a few symbols, pulling up a picture of a rather elegant youth.   
  
"Are you sure?" Father asked quietly, Quinn didn't recognize the tone. Dad nodded.  
  
"We agreed and I think Quinn is old enough to understand, now." The look he gave Quinn then was even worse than his disappointed look, it held far more trust. "You know about women," he said and Quinn almost choked at hearing his dad say the word. Of course he knew he had even before his teacher’s bland religious lesson. There had always been the other boys' horror stories about what made the outside so  _outside_  (and other stories about men who had escaped but, now a days, they didn't tell those sorts of stories when he was within earshot).  
  
He looked again at the picture and his view shifted. He stared in astonishment at this first, forbidden, glance; a smooth face, dark shiny eyes and a thick head of dark hair. The picture could have almost been of a young man but even imagining a father's beard on the chin didn't make it quite right. He knew the face was completely foreign. The eyes, though, he almost recognized and the hair. Very familiar, dark thick hair. Quinn did choke then and he gasped in horror. He knew that his dad had gone outside and that he had brought father back home, but this! He had never imagined something like this.    
  
"Y-you," he stuttered, "knew her?"  
  
"Yes," dad agreed, and then caught sight of his face, "not like that!" His own face turned bright red and father actually chuckled. "She helped me, as a friend, and I took some...samples before returning home."  
  
"Is that why," Quinn asked, feeling fear boiling up inside of him, "I get in so many fights?"  
  
"Because she's a woman?" Dad smiled comfortingly, "No, every culture came from a woman." Quinn felt himself gaping again, mind almost overloading at this new shock. "Women aren't like the stories you've heard from your friends. They're as different from one another as one as one man is different from another." Father was nodding but he was from outside, dad was from Athos but what he was saying...  
  
"Why are you showing me this," Quinn asked finally.   
  
"Because I think you're old enough now to understand what your father and I are trying to do, no matter how uncomfortable it makes others."  
  
"Simon said you loved women and wanted to live with them," Quinn muttered. Father laughed again.  
  
"I loved a woman, before, and I lived with her as Ethan and I do, though she was very different than he is. We just want them to teach the truth, without truth there can't be any understanding" for a moment he looked sad, "that is always the hardest battle." Dad rubbed his shoulder comfortingly.   
  
"Not that that is any reason to hurt someone," Dad added firmly and Quinn scuffed his feet on the floor and promised to apologize to Simon first thing the next day and agreed that he would try to solve his disagreement in nonviolent ways from then on.    
  
That night, just before he pulled his covers over his head, Quinn thought about the woman who gave him his genes (fleet commander, which was just so  _cool_ ) and the woman who his father had loved (dead but never forgotten, remembered in the lines of his brothers' face) and wondered at all the mother's of Athos.


End file.
